2006 Winners

Senior Division

Robert Branom (History) Faculty Advisor: Professor John Findlay

Against the 'Hun': Anti-Germanism at the Seattle Public Schools and the University of Washington, 1917-1918 Episodes of intensified discrimination against specific ethnic groups have occurred throughout American history, particularly at the onset of wars. The internment of Japanese-Americans in “relocation centers” at Manzanar, Minidoka, and Heart Mountain, during World War II, stands as one of the most widely known and unfortunate moments of "nativist" discrimination. More recently, self-described patriots attacked American Muslims following 9-11. Intensive periods of mass immigration have also stirred hatred among sectors of the Anglo-Saxon majority, against Germans, Irish, and other Catholics following the 1848 European exodus, and against Slavs, Jews, Italians, and Asians entering the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Evaluations of the Moga During the Interwar Years

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘modern’ as "denoting a recent style in art, architecture, etc. marked by a departure from traditional styles and values". In her paper for her History 494 E seminar entitled "Girls just want to have fun: American and Japanese Evaluations of the Japanese Moga During the Interwar Years”, Ms. Bruce examines one example of the conflict between the modern world and traditional culture which occurred in Japan during the years between the World Wars. The term "Moga" or ‘modan garu” was applied to young women who challenged the traditional modes of behavior and dress and adopted more Western attitudes. Sometimes called ‘Japanese flappers’ these young women were criticized by both Japanese and American writers as promiscuous and threatening to cultural values.

It is significant that Carolyn Claridge's senior honors thesis frames its title with a Spanish language expression; it is an indication of the diversity of viewpoints that she brings to bare on the intransigent questions of water rights in Bolivia. In her own words "This thesis is an investigation into the attempted privatization of the city of Cochabamba's water supply and the subsequent social uprising." The paper investigates why privatization was "incompatible with the socio-cultural and economic dynamics of Cochabamba;" it looks beyond easy solutions to be found in the literatures of the globalizing economy to local conditions and issues of governance. In recognizing this project, the jurors endorsed the view of Carolyn's advisor, Prof Wolfram Latsch, that she has "synthesized a large number of different information sources in different languages and subjects."

Bringing questions she had from personally meeting South Africans while studying abroad back to Seattle, Anne Kim has written a lucid and persuasive essay about a topic of extreme importance. Her masterful essay explores the complex question of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, and addresses this vital issue through the history of state-society relations in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Why, Kim asks, would the post-Apartheid South African government stand in the way of treatments that prevent the transmission of the virus from mothers to children? Kim's daring essay eschews simple answers in the face of the complex life and death situation that entire populations are facing. Gathering together documentation from diverse sources, Kim provides a compelling and troubling picture of the ideological legacies of racism--and perhaps more disturbingly, the ideological legacies of struggles against racism--as well as the very material consequences such a history has had upon contemporary state policies on an imperative public health concern.

Julie McElroy-Brown’s winning essay, "Shipbreaking at Alang, India" was a fascinating study on the afterlife of ships. The paper explored how ships, when they reach the end of their lives, are broken, or disassembled, by workers in Alang, India who do the work mostly by hand. This dangerous work exposes them and their environment to dangerous chemicals, and Ms. McElroy-Brown carefully analyzed the complicated political and economic issues that help to move the practice of shipbreaking from the rich world to places like Alang, India and that keep the work there.

In doing so, Ms. McElroy-Brown immersed herself in a number of fields including: medicine, the marine environment, Indian government structures and international trade. The essay is beautifully written, and is the result of impressive and resourceful research. Ms. McElroy-Brown used a wide variety of sources for her essay, was critical in choosing which she would use and which she would reject, and when she hit road blocks showed ingenuity in solving the inevitable problems that arise in conducting research.

Non-senior Award Recipients

This Winter I had the good fortune to connect with Giorgia Aiello and facilitate a library instruction session in her CHID270 class. After my two hour session with her class, I was raving about her students for days! They were extremely intelligent, perceptive, and engaged. But what impressed me most, were the excellent questions they asked. Naraelle Barrows, Arin Delaney, Edith Fikes, and Ingrid Haftel were four of the students in that class and the product of their work, titled "Aurora Avenue: Highway Culture in Transition", is delight to read.

These four students used a visual analysis of its highway signage to situate this Seattle roadway in various contexts including Seattle history, American highway culture, and the socio-economic factors affecting Aurora Avenue's growth and decline.

Remembering Laughter and Tears in a Drawer: Music as a Response to Soviet Repression

Sarah Cunningham has strong passions for research and writing and for Russian history and culture. On the project that brought her to us today, she explored a fascinating topic: the relations between politics and art, in this case music and the totalitarian politics of the Soviet Union. She focuses on one of the giants of twentieth century music, Dimitri Shostakovich, and one of the monsters of twentieth century politics, Josef Stalin. She bases her essay on a strong research base, to which she applied a critical methodology, and she presents her findings in a mature writing style.

Chairman Mao: Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman and the Great Leap Forward

In her paper, Chairman Mao: Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Supreme Commander, Great Helmsman and the Great Leap Forward, Junior Janice Phaik Lin Goh explores how a legacy and continuing policy of political suppression in China helped to secure Chairman Mao’s reign from 1954-1959 amid devastating economic and social policy, while reifying his status as a legendary hero in present-day China.

Her professor, Mary Callahan explained that Janice "was a regular at the reference desk in the East Asia Library and frequently came to me almost out of breath with excitement about the primary sources she was digging up. Using memoirs and Communist Party documents, she argues that Mao was particularly adept at oppressing dissent . . . Her use of primary sources . . . brings new kinds of voices to bear on debates about Mao in Chinese history."

How the XBOX went 360: An Overview of XboxÂ’s International Markets and Transnational Production

This group of seven students admirably traversed the vast resources of a variety of libraries on campus to produce two excellent projects, a written report and a DVD film. Their essays clearly reflected their growth through the research process. For example, one essay describes the process of going from a frustrating Google search to seeking help from colleagues and librarians, learning about what they called "priceless tools."

The group’s paper provides a history of Microsoft as a video game developer by examining the integrated, globalized plan of production, marketing and design of Xbox 360 in the process of becoming a transnational commodity. The paper reveals attributes of the technology involved in the development of Xbox 360 as part of its focus.